A night at the Dream Oscars. This is an excerpt from my book, The Dream Handbook, (published by Hachette Australia and Little Brown UK), pages 17-20. Originally, I called it ‘A night at the Dream Oscars’ but the publishers felt it was safer, for legal reasons, to call it ‘A night at the Dream Awards’. I understand that, but here, in blog format, I think I’m safe to return to the theme of the Oscars. …
Colour in dreams and in spelling. I recently asked my newsletter subscribers for topics they would like me to address in future blogs. Rebecca, from Minnesota, USA, suggested colour in dreams. Being American, Rebecca didn’t ask about ‘colour’ though, she asked about ‘color’. I’m delighted to bring you my offering about colour in dreams, interwoven, as it turns out, with a story about spelling. Last night, I dreamed … I was getting ready to go …
Helping people with their dreams. When someone tells you about a dream, how tempted are you to help out, to offer an interpretation, or to ask a leading question that you figure will help them to see the meaning of their dream? According to modern folklore, people scatter fast in social situations when someone mentions a dream. Apparently, while our own dreams are intensely interesting to us personally, other people’s dreams are deadly boring conversation-killers. …
The truth: what your dreams really mean. Your dreams come from you. They are the result of your mind and brain processing your experiences, and so they offer a wonderful, truthful insight into your mindset. Does this sound too scientific for you? Too mundane? Would you prefer to think that your dreams abound with messages from spiritual guides, with information from other planes, with astral meetings with soul mates, with glimpses of the future, with …
Weird dreams and weird work. When I was invited to talk about my ‘weird work’ on HubSpot’s Weird Work podcast show, I said yes – they have a fabulous show – and then sat back and looked at my work through fresh eyes. I know many of our dreams seem totally weird, until we understand them, but is working as a dream analyst really so weird? Some of HubSpot’s recent Weird Work guests include a …
The best dream ever. It’s a question journalists often ask me. “What’s the most amazing dream you’ve ever had?” It’s a great question, but it floors me every time. There are so many astounding dreams to choose from, and they’re each amazing in their own way. Was my most amazing dream the one I had as a child, where I could lay down at the edge of a lake and, where adults saw only a …
The mindset helmet. You might have noticed that I talk a lot about mindset and how dreams can help us to identify both our conscious and unconscious mindset, but what does this really mean? I picture mindset as a helmet, perhaps a little like a bike helmet but composed of a network of living neural pathways, relatively flexible, reprogrammable, but sometimes stubbornly and archaically fixed. It’s the sum total of all your beliefs (conscious and …
Every dream needs a title. When you record a dream, do you give it a title? While it’s a creative way to respect a dream, to give it the honour of a name, there are some very practical reasons to title your dreams. First though, you do record your dreams in some way, don’t you? Whether you write them down by hand, type them onto your computer, pop them into an app on your mobile …
Dream interpretation chart. Interpreting dreams is an immersive affair. If you really want to understand and gain helpful insight from a dream, dabbling in the shallow waters around the edges of the dream isn’t going to take you there. Playing with one symbol from your dream isn’t going to take you there. Meditating upon the dream and emerging with an intuitive understanding isn’t going to take you the whole way there. All of these approaches …
Do drugs affect dreams? Do drugs, whether medicinal or recreational, affect dreams? Let’s begin with medicinal drugs. If you take any of the following, you may have noticed an increase in vivid or upsetting dreams or nightmares: Anti-depressants (SSRIs), beta-blockers for blood pressure, Alzheimer’s medications such as donepezil and rivastigmine, statins for lowering cholesterol, Parkinson’s medications such as amantadine, steroids such as prednisone & methylprednisolone, and anti-histamines, either over the counter or prescribed, for allergies. …